


The Orphanage

by plincess_cho (ai_hao)



Category: DBSK | Tohoshinki | TVfXQ | TVXQ, Super Junior, f(x)
Genre: Author: Ai, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-18
Updated: 2015-06-18
Packaged: 2018-04-04 22:38:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4155636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ai_hao/pseuds/plincess_cho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Note: This fic is UNFINISHED. I know sort of where I want to take it, but would appreciate input along the way.</p>
    </blockquote>





	The Orphanage

**Author's Note:**

> Note: This fic is UNFINISHED. I know sort of where I want to take it, but would appreciate input along the way.

It’s three in the morning and Heechul can’t sleep. In the other bed on the other side of the tiny room, Han Geng keeps tossing and turning, causing the rusty springs under the thin mattress to squeak and groan relentlessly. Heechul hears the sound of thunder rumbling in the distance and worries that the roof will start leaking again. The tattered shingles on the roof have been through decades of storms, and this might be their last.

Suddenly, there’s a loud pounding on the door and Heechul jumps out of bed. He shoves his feet into a pair of threadbare slippers, picks up a flashlight, and pads through the dark hall to the front entry. When he opens the door, his eyes fall onto a small bedraggled looking girl. She looks up at him with big, tearful eyes and Heechul’s heart sinks.

“Did someone bring you here?” he asks softly.

She nods as tears drip down her cheek. Heechul reaches out to take her hand and leads her inside. He brings her into the small kitchen and sits her down at the kitchen table while he flicks the light on. The girl looks to be eight or nine and seems abnormally chubby. There’s a small envelope pinned to her lapel, and Heechul motions towards it. The girl unpins the envelope and hands it over, all without saying a word.

Heechul opens it, and out falls about three thousand won and a note that reads:

_Thank you… and I’m sorry._

An unwanted memory flashes through Heechul’s mind as he remembers the day so many years ago where he—

He shoves the memory out of his mind and focused on the little girl. “My name is Heechul,” he says softly. “What’s your name?”

The girl doesn’t speak. She just stares at him and blinks back tears. Heechul doesn’t push her for answers. That can wait until morning. Instead, he says, “You’ll sleep in the girl’s room. Would you like to take off your jacket first?”

She nods and Heechul helps her out of her overcoat. He then realizes that someone had dressed her in multiple layers of clothes, as if trying to send with her as many articles of clothing as possible. Once she sheds a few extra layers, Heechul realizes that she isn’t chubby at all; skinny arms poke out of an shrunken sweater and thin ankles stick out from her pant legs. Heechul hangs her overcoat on the rack with the other children’s and leads her down the dark hallway.

He knocks softly on the door and upon receiving no reply, pushes it open. The room is as small as the one he and Han Geng share and also has two twin beds on either side of the room. Each bed holds two girls, around the new girl’s age. They’re fast asleep, huddled under thin blankets as they dream of a better tomorrow.

“Wait right here,” Heechul says. He hurries back to his room and pulls the blankets and pillow off the bed. Upon return, he notices the girl hasn’t moved an inch from where he left her. “We’ll figure out the bed situation in the morning. But for now, you can sleep with these.” He arranges them on the floor for her, grateful that they’d just cleaned earlier. She lies down on her makeshift bed and immediately closes her eyes, finally allowing her tears to run down her face.

Heechul comes back to his room and stretches out on his own bed, now bare of any bedclothes.

“What was that?” Han Geng asks from across the room.

“Someone dropped off a little girl,” Heechul replies sadly.

“Someone?” Han Geng asks.

“Someone,” Heechul answers. In the dark, his eyebrows furrow into a frown and he tries to fall asleep before the memories catch up to him.

 

*

 

Heechul and Han Geng awake with the sunrise just like every other morning. They stumble into the kitchen and Han Geng starts warming up some water. They ran out of tea bags years ago, but Han Geng insists that the hot water is an essential morning ritual. He sits down at the kitchen table next to Heechul and waits for the water to boil.

“We can’t take another kid,” he says softly.

“I know,” Heechul replies. “But we can’t abandon her. Someone already did.”

“We won’t,” Han Geng says.

They sit in silence until the kettle whistles. Han Geng gets up and pours the steaming water into two chipped mugs. He sets one in front of Heechul and sits down again. “What’s her name?”

“I don’t know,” Heechul replies. “She… she didn’t say anything last night, and I didn’t want to scare her off.”

Han Geng sips at his water. “I think we need to go to the church again. Maybe they’ll help us.”

“Yeah,” Heechul replies. “We’re up to fifteen kids now. Ten boys, five girls.”

“We’ll make it work,” Han Geng assures him. “We always have and we always will.” He looks up at the clock and stands up. “I’ll start breakfast. You go wake the kids for school.” He says it like a suggestion, like they don’t do the same thing every single morning. Heechul finishes his hot water and walks down the hall to the boys room.

The boys’ room is bigger than the girls’ room, but not by terribly much. There are four sets of bunk beds lined up like a military barracks, and Heechul wakes each boy in turn. He starts with Kyuhyun, who’s by far the hardest to wake up. Heechul pokes at him a bit and then walks around to the other boys, giving him time to come back to the land of the living. “Time to get up,” he says. “Get dressed, brush your teeth, get your school things. _No fighting_.” After a general amount of commotion, all the boys are awake and start prepping for the day.

He goes to the girls’ room next. Three are already awake, including the newest one. The walls between the rooms are thin, and the amount of noise the boys make always carries over. “Good morning,” he says gently as he wakes up the other two. “You have a new roommate,” he says. He helps the newest to her feet. “Would you introduce yourself to everyone?”

She shakes her head.

“Could you at least tell us your name?” he prods.

She shakes her head again.

“Then we’ll name you instead,” he says.

“She looks like… a Sulli,” the oldest, Song Qian, says. “Doesn’t she?” The rest agree, and it’s settled.


End file.
